Geri Gay
Putting you in control
Geri Gay is working hard to put you in control. As the chair of the Department of Communication and affiliated with both CIS and the Institute for Social Sciences (ISS), Gay brings her multidisciplinary talents to the project of enriching a visitor's experience at museums—technology that is being used right now to also enhance campus tours for prospective Cornell students.
“I'm really interested in information appliances, in space and place and in influencing the next generation of computers, not just a new desktop,” she says.
As part of the MUSE Project, Gay's group is incorporating hand-held wireless technology into a number of prominent institutions around the world, from Cornell's Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew near London.
Instead of tape recorders that offer the same information to everyone, MUSE's wireless receivers can provide literally limitless access to information, as well as provide links that users can actively explore. In addition, the wireless technology offers opportunities for quick, convenient and open-ended discussion between and among museum visitors and curators: “At first it was straight up equipment for tours,” she says. “We have expanded our focus to give people the option of actually leaving messages, which makes the museums more social spaces, where people can interact.”
With the CampusAware system, the Cornell campus itself has become a testing ground for Gay's ideas. Here, visitors on tours are given PDAs that are equipped with GPS locators; the system can then track visitors' progress around the campus, alerting them (with a beep) to relevant information exactly where and when they need it.
“We don't want to interrupt traditional campus tours led by students,” assures Gay. “We want to enhance the experience, to give more information.”
As usual, Gay also wants to afford users opportunities to take an active role in their experiences by taking notes and leaving feedback and impressions.
Gay already envisions a world of computing liberated from the desktop. She pops on a short video documentary of another project: to provide wireless educational technology to schoolchildren in museums. In the video, a group of third-graders use hand-held computers to explore the Asian galleries at the Johnson Museum. Instead of being presented with traditional paper-and-pencil tasks, the students use the devices to bring the museum displays to life. In one such activity, the students are informed that a statue was once vividly colored, and they are invited to recreate its original appearance by choosing their own colors and applying them (on the computer screen) with a touch of a stylus; in another, they are asked to construct a virtual clay watchtower, like the one in the museum collection. Preliminary studies are already showing that, with the wireless tools, attention to the objects is improved and information retention is enhanced.
“I hate to use the word ‘empowering,' but it is,” Gay says. “It makes them feel like they're in control of their own learning environments. We have trouble getting the little computers out of the kids' hands.”